Tuesday, June 29, 2010

BUILDING CODE VIOLATIONS FOR THE LOVE SHACK.

- - - -

TYPE OF ABODE:
Gathering place for social club.
INITIAL OBSERVATIONS:
• Only marker to indicate the location of the building is a sign at least 10 miles away. The sign was not installed by the county, and is not in the county-mandated colors for road signage (should be green and white, is actually hot pink and cardboard).
• Building is set farther back from the rode than necessary, and only accessible via a long driveway, which appears to be permanently blocked by a large Chrysler. Car will have to be towed before further action is taken.
EXTERNAL VIOLATIONS:
• Surrounding field is unkempt.
• Overly aggressive signage (i.e. "STAY AWAY, FOOLS") .
• Excessive oxidation of tin roof.
• Several condom wrappers and used condoms were spotted behind premises.
INTERNAL VIOLATIONS:
• Particulate matter (likely glitter, possibly ground glass) covers entryway, hallway, et cetera.
• No posted sign indicating maximum occupancy.
• Occupancy by more persons than mandated by fire code given the size of the building.
• Inadequate ventilation.
• Pervasive smell (best described as a heavy musk, or funk) throughout premises.
CONSTRUCTION VIOLATIONS:
• Entire shack appears to be inadequately reinforced and will shimmy given intense jumping or dancing.
NOTES ON INSPECTION:
• The front door is excessively thick, which has a tendency to muffle outside speech. Inspector had to knock several times and state name and occupation in an increasingly louder voice before he was allowed entry.
• Many of the occupants were noticeably perspiring due to lack of ventilation or air conditioner, and had subsequently removed most of the their clothing.
• The only electrical outlet that could have been used for an air conditioner was instead given over to a jukebox, in possible violation of code FS-5.20: No Commercial Ventures on Public Property.
SUGGESTED COURSE OF ACTION:
Building's owners have been notified of violations on three successive instances. As given by Infraction Code B-52, under the Section of Law CT-1989, building is to be slated for immediate demolition.

Yes, please.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Reluctance to Let Go

There’s a movement afoot to frame science/religion discussions in such a way that those of who believe that the two are incompatible are labeled as extremists who can be safely excluded from grownup discussions about the issue. It’s somewhat insulting — to be told that people like you are incapable of conducting thoughtful, productive conversations with others — and certainly blatantly false as an empirical matter — I’ve both participated in and witnessed numerous such conversations that were extremely substantive and well-received. It’s also a bit worrisome, since whether a certain view is “true” or “false” seems to take a back seat to whether it is “moderate” or “extreme.” But people are welcome to engage or not with whatever views they choose.


What troubles me is how much our cultural conversation is being impoverished by a reluctance to face up to reality. In many ways the situation is parallel to the discussion about global climate change. In the real world, our climate is being affected in dramatic ways by things that human beings are doing. We really need to be talking about serious approaches to this problem; there are many factors to be taken into consideration, and the right course of action is far from obvious. Instead, it’s impossible to broach the subject in a public forum without being forced to deal with people who simply refuse to accept the data, and cling desperately to the idea that the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t getting any warmer, or it’s just sunspots, or warmth is a good thing, or whatever. Of course, the real questions are being addressed by some people; but in the public domain the discussion is blatantly distorted by the necessity of dealing with the deniers. As a result, the interested but non-expert public receives a wildly inaccurate impression of what the real issues are.


Over the last four hundred or so years, human beings have achieved something truly amazing: we understand the basic rules governing the operation of the world around us. Everything we see in our everyday lives is simply a combination of three particles — protons, neutrons, and electrons — interacting through three forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force. That is it; there are no other forms of matter needed to describe what we see, and no other forces that affect how they interact in any noticeable way. And we know what those interactions are, and how they work. Of course there are plenty of things we don’t know — there are additional elementary particles, dark matter and dark energy, mysteries of quantum gravity, and so on. But none of those is relevant to our everyday lives (unless you happen to be a professional physicist). As far as our immediate world is concerned, we know what the rules are. A staggeringly impressive accomplishment, that somehow remains uncommunicated to the overwhelming majority of educated human beings.


That doesn’t mean that all the interesting questions have been answered; quite the opposite. Knowing the particles and forces that make up our world is completely useless when it comes to curing cancer, buying a new car, or writing a sonnet. (Unless your sonnet is about the laws of physics.) But there’s no question that this knowledge has crucial implications for how we think about our lives. Astrology does not work; there is no such thing as telekinesis; quantum mechanics does not tell you that you can change reality just by thinking about it. There is no life after death; there’s no spiritual essence that can preserve a human consciousness outside its physical body. Life is a chemical reaction; there is no moment at conception or otherwise when a soul is implanted in a body. We evolved as a result of natural processes over the history of the Earth; there is no supernatural intelligence that created us and maintains an interest in our behavior. There is no Natural Law that specifies how human beings should live, including who they should marry. There is no strong conception of free will, in the sense that we are laws unto ourselves over and above the laws of nature. The world follows rules, and we are part of the world.


How great would it be if we could actually have serious, productive public conversations about the implications of these discoveries? For all that we have learned, there’s a tremendous amount yet to be figured out. We know the rules by which the world works, but there’s a lot we have yet to know about how to live within it; it’s the difference between knowing the rules of chess and playing like a grandmaster. What is “life,” anyway? What is consciousness? How should we define who is a human being, and who isn’t? How should we live together in a just and well-ordered society? What are appropriate limits of medicine and biological manipulation? How can we create meaning and purpose in a world where they aren’t handed to us from on high? How should we think about love and friendship, right and wrong, life and death?


These are real questions, hard questions, and we have the tools in front of us to have meaningful discussions about them. And, as with climate change, some people are having such discussions; but the public discourse is so badly distorted that it has little relationship to the real issues. Instead of taking the natural world seriously, we have discussions about “Faith.” We pretend that questions of meaning and purpose and value must be the domain of religion. We are saddled with bizarre, antiquated attitudes toward sex and love, which have terrible consequences for real human beings.


I understand the reluctance to let go of religion as the lens through which we view questions of meaning and morality. For thousands of years it was the best we could do; it provided social structures and a framework for thinking about our place in the world. But that framework turns out not to be right, and it’s time to move on.


Rather than opening our eyes and having the courage and clarity to accept the world as it is, and to tackle some of the real challenges it presents, as a society we insist on clinging to ideas that were once perfectly reasonable, but have long since outlived their usefulness. Nature obeys laws, we are part of nature, and our job is to understand our lives in the context of reality as it really is. Once that attitude goes from being “extremist” to being mainstream, we might start seeing some real progress.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Most Basic Form of Mind Control is Repetition


The Most Basic Form of Mind Control is Repetition from Adam Cosco on Vimeo.

Classic

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Watch doctor who 2005 5x10 vincent and the doctor

http://www.divxden.com/1nbgtlst6dsz/doctor_who_2005.5x10.vincent_and_the_doctor.hdtv_xvid-fov.avi.html

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Bomba Estereo – Aguasala

Bomba Estereo – Aguasala: "


lovely new video by the Colombian Bomba Estereo

Aguasala is taken from their 2009 album Blow Up

as FADER saidWicked Game for bassheads’




"

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Stewart – Queen Elizabeth II Made It Sir

Stewart – Queen Elizabeth II Made It Sir: "

Earlier this year it was announced that Patrick Stewart was on this year’s list to receive a knighthood, and the ceremony making him Sir happened today at Buckingham Palace.


Stewart, knighted for his services to drama, gave credit to an English teacher, Cecil Dormand, who encouraged Stewart to act. “Although many people in my life have had great influence on me, without this man none of it would have happened,” he said.




Growing up, some of Stewart’s heroes were actors who had been knighted. “But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theatre and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier [and] Sir John Gielgud,” he said. “The knights of the theatre represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held.


“To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.


Congratulations to Sir Patrick Stewart!


"

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Yes, please.

The dad I wish I had.

Quote: From Former Czech President Vaclav Havel

Quote: From Former Czech President Vaclav Havel: "

Vaclav-havel-velvet-revolution "If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation."

-Vaclav Havel

"

Peter Orlovsky, Poet and Partner of Allen Ginsberg, Dies

Peter Orlovsky, Poet and Partner of Allen Ginsberg, Dies: "


Orlovsky_ginsberg



Peter Orlovsky has died, the L.A. Times reports:



"Peter Orlovsky, longtime partner of Allen Ginsberg and a poet in his own right, died May 30 in Vermont of lung cancer. He was 76.

Orlovsky met Ginsberg in San Francisco in 1954, before Ginsberg wrote his seminal poem, 'Howl.' Published in 1956, 'Howl' was the subject of a 1957 obscenity trial that became a landmark free-expression case. Afterward, Ginsberg and Orlovsky moved to Paris, where they stayed with Gregory Corso, William Burroughs and others in a boarding house that would become known as the Beat Hotel...Although they spent time apart, Ginsberg and Orlovsky's relationship endured for more than 30 years. Orlovsky's poetry was collected by City Lights Books in 1977; three of those poems are online. His papers are at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas."

Below, James Franco as Ginsberg and Aaron Tveit as Orlovsky in the forthcoming Ginsberg biopic, Howl.


Franco



"

He's not a boy that you can change.

Kylie Minogue's Orgiastic Video for 'All the Lovers'